Students, teachers, parents, community members and the press are invited to join the John McDonogh Alumni Association, Parents Across America NOLA, the Downtown Neighborhood Improvement Association, and the Esplanade Ridge/Treme Civic Association in front of John McDonogh High School, 2426 Esplanade Avenue, at 5:30 PM on August 29, 2011 to commemorate the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, to review the state of public education in New Orleans six years later, and to set a course to save our schools.

Taking the fate of John McDonogh Senior High as an example of the failed policies and broken promises of the Recovery School District, advocates for children, teachers and community schools will gather to pray and to demonstrate our investment in our children and our schools. We will be asking hard questions about the ways charter schools have negatively affected our children and about the scandals and failures of charter schools and RSD-run schools. Together we will assert our right to a democratic voice in how schools are rebuilt, what schools are rebuilt, and who runs the schools in our communities.

We will look at the betrayal of public trust in the past six years as the RSD has held community meetings, promised public engagement and then disregarded the wishes of parents and stake-holders again and again. We will examine the false choices that the school district has offered parents and children and the way school choice has divided schools from their communities and from parental oversight and involvement. We will condemn the political influence, waste and lack of foresight that has characterized the rebuilding and renovations of schools thus far and demand a fair, equitable and transparent process going forward. We will expose RSD’s deliberate and systematic neglect of certain schools to justify takeover and closure. We will stand up to save John McDonogh and all of our schools from autocratic decisions made by unelected, out-of-touch and out-of-town administrators.

Please join with us on Monday, August 29, 2011 at 5:30 PM in front of John McDonogh High School to advocate for the right of every New Orleans public school child to real recovery, real reform, real improvement and real choice in their schools.

Parent Kelly Fisher shares her story of discrimination against her son.

Parents of children with special needs in New Orleans are one step closer to positive changes in the chaotic public school system. On April 26, 2010 Federal Court Judge Jay Zaney denied the Louisiana Department of Education’s motion to dismiss the Southern Poverty Law Center’s lawsuit seeking justice for more than 4500 students with special needs attending public schools in the 51 different LEA’s (Local Education Agency) operating within the city of New Orleans.

While many hail the changes in public education in New Orleans as groundbreaking, some of the changes have been a nightmare for children with special needs. Parents have to literally go school to school to apply and are often dissuaded from even applying if they mention that their chid has special needs. The state of Louisiana has no way of tracking how many parents are turned away. Parents report having been turned away from as many as 8 different schools once they revealed that their child has special needs. During yesterday’s court hearing Judge Zaney asked the lawyers for the Louisiana Department of Education if this is how the system supposed to work. The Lawyers responded that this is indeed how choice works in New Orleans. Of course parents should not be turned away because of the special education status of their children, but the State of Louisiana has failed to put in safeguards to prevent this type of discrimination. The lawsuit hopes to correct this type of problem and many more that many parents experience.

Families of kids with disabilities are waiting for reforms. When is it our turn? Louisiana Charter School Law speaks to the purpose of the legislation. It reads:

“Finally, it is the intention of the legislature that the best interests of at-risk pupils shall be the overriding consideration in implementing the provisions of this Chapter.”

Special needs kids are defined in this law as at risk pupils. However, schools are being allowed to discriminate against children with disabilities. Schools have been allowed to become charter schools in Louisiana who have policies for entry criteria that would exclude children with disabilities. Some schools have been allowed to have student academic retention criteria that exclude children with disabilities. Some schools also often lack the ability to provide accessible spaces.

Because the charter proliferation has resulted in competition for students, it has had the unintended consequence of making it not beneficial for charter schools to accept students with disabilities. Children with disabilities are often more expensive to educate and have a negative impact on the school’s performance scores (SPS).

This has created environment where parents have been turned away before even applying to a school. Many families find that schools don’t have the services their children need. Children are pushed out of some schools due to poor academic performance or behavior performance. There are many issues for families of children with disabilities that center around access to quality public schools. They include access to school transportation at a time when education reforms have eliminated neighborhood schools. Parents are constantly being contacted during the school day because of the school’s inability to serve the child often exacerbating student behavior challenges.

The Louisiana Department of Education does not collect the data in a format that would uncover the kinds of problems parents are experiencing. We need a way of collecting data on every student that applies to a charter school or that leaves a charter school. The state should track who applies for schools and where and why families are being turned away. Within the Recovery School District, there is a common application process. Parents can apply to over 70 different schools. For many of the most successful schools that maintain entry criteria, the application deadlines occurs well before the publicizing of the common application process. There are parents who are turned away even before being given an application.

The challenge is to end discrimination, segregation, abuse, and the violation of children with disabilities. The strongest advocates for the defense of our rights can come from the very same parents being affected. We want to make things better in a systemic way.

We’ve engaged the political process by working to come up with a model compliance plan in a bill we had filed with the state legislature. In the application to become a charter school, this plan will force the charter operator to think through how they will provide services to children with disabilities. If they do, this they will be better prepared to deliver these services when children show up at their door. Sadly, we were met with opposition from the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools at every turn. The provision to have a model master plan for complying with federal laws was stripped from the bill that eventually passed.

In order to support our case, we needed data. We collaborated with a local research reform group to get some of our questions answered. Any data collection system used by education agencies should clearly depict any IDEA category of exceptionality. Do they serve a variety of exceptionalities is the question for schools when they indicate they have a student with a disability.

If there is to be an experiment with charters, there has to be a system to collect data so that the impact of changes can be accessed on a variety of students. If schools are not serving a certain category of children, the state needs to have process where they intervene. In New Orleans, a school was flagged as having too few students with disabilities. When up for charter renewal, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education continued their charter anyway. Another school showed a low percentage of students with disabilities. Instead of triggering an investigation, the school was simply flagged.

Before charters, the only schools in New Orleans that had less than 5% of students with disabilities were Magnet schools with selective entry requirements. Clearly the admissions criteria at these schools also discriminated against students with disabilities.

Charter schools must operate with transparency and be accountable to families in this system. A charter advocate said that we can count the number of due process hearings for students with disabilities, 99 percent never make it to the due process stage.

We, as parents, work to have to a visible presence in the community and the media, raising issues to show what parents are going through so that decision and policy makers don’t lose site of kids.

“New Orleans parents complain that charter schools are leaving most vulnerable students behind”

Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act [ESEA] may promulgate the chartering of more schools across the country. What are the implications for children with disabilities? How do we ensure that parents of children with disabilities have access to choice?

If there is to be a proliferation of charter schools we have to review the states policy to make sure they don’t discriminate against students with disabilities. In the charter authorization process, candidates need to be able to demonstrate that they have the knowledge and capacity to serve families of children with disabilities.

If states accept education dollars, they should be held accountable. We want to see states come up with policies to ensure that charter schools have the capacity to provide a continuum of special education supports and services.